Seldom Indeed Does Human Virtue

Midway Along The Journey Of Our Life I Woke To Find Myself In A Dark Wood, For I Had Wandered Off From The Straight Path. How Hard It Is To Tell What It Was Like, This Wood Of Wilderness, Savage And Stubborn (the Thought Of It Brings Back All My Old Fears), A Bitter Place! Death Could Scarce Be Bitterer. But If I Would Show The Good That Came Of It I Must Talk About Things Other Than The Good.

Those Ancients Who In Poetry Presented The Golden Age, Who Sang Its Happy State, Perhaps, In Their Parnassus, Dreamt This Place. Here, Mankind's Root Was Innocent; And Here Were Every Fruit And Never-ending Spring; These Streams--the Nectar Of Which Poets Sing.

There Is In Hell A Place Stone-built Throughout, Called Malebolge, Of An Iron Hue, Like To The Wall That Circles It About.

I Presumed To Fix My Look On The Eternal Light So Long That I Consumed My Sight Thereon.

I Found Myself Within A Forest Dark, For The Straightfoward Pathway Had Been Lost. Ah Me! How Hard A Thing Is To Say, What Was This Forest Savage, Rough, And Stern, Which In The Very Thought Renews The Fear. So Bitter Is It, Death Is Little More.